Of all the groups to turn their back on this year’s World Press Freedom day in Afghanistan, few would have put their money on the Afghan journalists themselves. Neither of the two main independent journalists associations – the Afghan National Journalists Union (ANJU) or the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) – found reason to celebrate this May 3rd and both avoided an International-Community organised event in Kabul called to highlight freedom of the press issues. According to Abdul Hamid Mobarez, President of the ANJU and Afghanistan’s former Deputy Minister of Communication and Information, it would have been inappropriate to attend given the current challenges faced by journalists operating throughout the country.
“UNESCO celebrated press freedom day in Kabul and so did the Afghan Government press people, but we didn’t. We didn’t think it was appropriate. There are currently two journalists in jail and the Director of one of our television stations is under investigation” said Mobarez.
Rahimullah Samander, President of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) talking to Martin Battersby, Albany Associates
“The situation here in Afghanistan is very difficult. Since last year, two journalists have been killed, one injured, twelve have been beaten, twenty-seven journalists have been arrested, and more than sixty have been threatened”.
According to Mobarez, the working environment for journalists in Afghanistan is precarious. Afghan journalists, he claims, are now under attack from all sides including from the Taliban, the drug mafia, and the government – as well as facing pressure from international forces keen for information. Rahimullah Samander, the President of the AIJA which has over 1,900 members throughout the county, agrees – though he points out that initially considerable progress was made in the sector.
“From 2002-2006 the International Community supported the Afghan Media very well. However, funding is now more difficult to get now. It’s important that they [the IC] do not forget the media as journalists can play a big hand in development”.
“They [the Afghan media] can write influential reports on political issues, justice, or drugs. At the moment the international community is concerned about weak government, corruption, and human rights issues. We can report on this. There is a list of issues we can report on, and the media can play an important role if it is supported”.
That said, Samander says key obstacles must be overcome for lasting progress to be made. One of his major concerns is that Jihadi groups are beginning to use the media, rather than the gun, to control public opinion. Jihadi leaders, he says, now have their own large, well-funded – and often Iranian-backed – TV channels. Slowly but surely, he argues, local, ethnically-based, and politically-controlled media is becoming more influential at the expense of independent media. Equally worrying is that fact that rather than defending press freedom the Afghan government is all too often seen as its opponent, many Afghan journalists complaining of regular detention and harassment by government officials.
“Even where journalists have been killed – a local journalist in Parwan, a BBC journalists in Helmand, and Canadian television reporter in Kandahar – the Afghan police rarely conduct a proper investigation and no-one is held to account” says Samander.
“In the past President Karzai said he was listening and that he was supportive of press freedom. Now he is too busy with his election campaign and doesn’t want to upset his ulama [Senior Clerics]. He doesn’t want to touch media issues, especially anything related to blasphemy or to journalists in detention”.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s media law is something very much on the ‘to do’ list from a media development perspective. Having spent much of the past four years moving from Afghan ministries, to the Afghan Parliament, to the President’s Office, to the Supreme Court, the fate of the media law still hangs in the balance. And there is little doubt that Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA), Afghanistan’s main state broadcaster, is the major bone of contention.
“The media law is a kind of a game between three parts of the government – the judiciary, the parliament and president Karzai himself” Samander says, “although the control of Radio Television Afghanistan is the part that they are really fighting about”
“The majority of Afghan journalists support the transformation of RTA into a proper public service broadcaster. However let’s not forget that there are other parts of the media law, such as the article [Article 45] that covers blasphemy, that are just as important for press freedom. But on these we will have to wait and see”.
Like the media law, press freedom in Afghanistan is a work in progress (how does the Afghan saying go, ‘Saber Talkh as Laken bar-e shlrin dara’ – a river is made drop by drop), but elsewhere, in the wider media sector, there is more room for optimism. Independent media has grown inexorably in the seven years since the fall of the Taliban and there’s little doubt that journalism standards in Afghanistan have improved markedly – journalist’s questions are more probing than ever, and Afghan programming is more incisive. Equally encouraging is the fact that journalism is becoming a popular course of study in Afghan cities, meaning with a little luck, and perhaps a little more funding from the international community, a new generation of Afghan journalists will be on hand to pick up their pens, cameras or tape-recorders when and where they are most needed.
It’s a tough environment for the media in Afghanistan. But thankfully a tough, robust, and an ever-developing media, and one not afraid to boycott World Press Freedom day, is exactly what the country might now have.
Martin Battersby